Memories Over Terlawk
by Maverick87
Summary: Peter Puppy tries to find himself.


**Memories over Terlawk**

"Peter have you ever tried to control the monster?"

"Which one?"

"The one you turn into."

"Sure."

"Does it work, can you repress it?"

"Can you stop yourself from sneezing?"

"No…of course not."

"It's like trying to stop your brain from thinking a thought. Like trying to stop a train with your body."

For a second we both stop. We're using this rapid dialogue to promote how I feel; I'm supposed to express my feelings in succession without stopping. A machine gun.

"You do know that's a sign of depression? When you talk about suicide?"

"So I can't talk about things?"

"Ending your life is not something you casually talk about."

"I'm just following your lead. You asked me how to control the monster."

"Killing yourself is not how you combat something."

"Have you ever been a monster?"

"Peter that's not the point."

"Then maybe you should consider what it's like."

"You've never explained it."

"Well then by all means."

The next thing you know the stapler comes off the desk and I use its fangs. Puncnt. Right into my palm the pain bounces through my arm.

"Peter you can't do that! You'll…"

And my eyes turn yellow and I can feel every muscle twitch and explode. Every memory I've ever had tints itself in green and red. I once was a puppy who loved to chase cars down the street and I was scared of the vacuum cleaner because its screams were shadows in my ears. There's a tree somewhere with my urine on it and I find myself burying myself and other things like bones and carcasses. The moon clicks on and off like a banker's lamp. The monster smiles at me and I can't even remember his name. I call him Peter too and he licks me for a second, and I can't find an emotion to attach to this moment. My teeth just grind back and forth. I see my mother's milk in the distance, other dogs who didn't like me, and a mask of the monster spinning randomly as everything becomes steak. Things eat things. The colors collide as my newest memory completes a picture, a picture of an office clawing and destroying itself, and the ghost rattles his chains and the doctor can't stop screaming stop stop stop stop you have to calm down Peter, then I see the syringe and the other people show up with riot shields of all things.

And the needle sips me. The cocktail fevers the clock.

"Wake up Peter."

The doctor is standing above me and there's a porterhouse in his eyes. My hands and ankles are cuffed. The straightjacket hugs with tightening warmth.

"Do you get it now doc?"

"Peter you are going to be institutionalized."

"But I'm a superhero."

"You're a sidekick."

"Look doctor, this was part of the exercise."

"The exercise was not to destroy my office."

"It was a crappy office anyway."

"You knew what you were doing."

"I knew how to bring him out, after that it's like a dream."

"Just take him away."

The doctor starts picking up his papers. The diploma frame is a little crooked from the earthquake I made.

"Is that it for today?" I ask as my body is now a sack of chained potatoes.

"I'll bill you when I see you at the hospital."

"Talk to you later then. Thanks for the time."

He shakes his head as the arms pull me and pull me. I feel there's a drain somewhere pulling me to the sewers. Deep and quiet whispers of voices and dark animals. See what happens when you try to show someone how your problems work? Hell, it could have been worse though couldn't it?

I could've talked about my father.

* * *

The first thing about a white wall is that you haven't stained it yet. Think of your life as a white wall as age comes and goes and things form from it and live behind it; the cracks and plastering and reapplication of paint to cover up the past mistakes

An orderly comes in orderly. He hands me a pink pill.

"Take this."

"I'm fine, but thanks."

The guy shakes his head with that same shake the doctor had. The "oh you're a poor little insolent bastard aren't you?" shake of disappointment and overextended sympathy that isn't real.

His hand opens my jaw with force I didn't see coming. I yelp high and sharp. Then my snout is clamped. The natural reaction of all dogs. I swallow the pill and the day gets thrifty.

See the thing is called Paxil and it's an anxiety destabilization pill. It's supposed to curve the monster into a bubble or something, a dead fish, a plush doll.

Hahaha I am like a plush doll now and I'm waiting for the claw.

* * *

The ray gun fires and Jim kills things. I start laughing and Jim keeps screaming inaudible expletives at the enemies. I don't even know what these aliens are. They remind me of the hybrid between a rabbit and a polar bear, but apparently they want to destroy the earth and hollow it out for a gigantic ice burrow.

I can keep watching the destruction the same way little kids find anthills. The problem is that I am the buddy without the magnifying glass. I am inside but not in control of the action.

"You okay fuzzbuddy?"

"Uh, yeah Jim. I'm great."

Another polar bear walks up and Jim literally sends his head into mushy rubble. It's like he got stewed right in front of me. My tongue is resisting the urge to sop up the blood. A snap goes off behind us and I see the chamber smoke rising from the gun. Yet the bullet fails to do anything except ricochet off Jim's suit. I sort of wish to have a suit like that but we're trying to leave this place in one piece.

We get to these double doors which have to be the entrance to the polar bunnies hideout, that or old gothic doors are just the norm here. Jim jiggles the handle but it's a locked. Apparently these guys are smart enough to lock their doors.

"Stand back Peter. I'm going to blow it up."

"Jim I can open the damn door."

Before he fires I use my dewclaw to pick the lock. And veterinarians say the dewclaw is completely useless but I found awhile back that there is some function to it. Like opening doors from 1890 which have horrible locking mechanisms. I could've use my credit card if I wanted to.

The door pops open and the sky is violent. I guess I mean violent in color because it's pink and yellow as if someone wanted lemonade or a chemist's flask. Jim pulls his mo-ped spaceship jetpack orgy of an escape out of his backpack and again my wanting is pulling my tongue and giving me a ridiculous smile. You know the kind. The dopey doggy grin where you pet the dog on the back of his head and he is happy, oh so fucking happy, to see you.

We start flying with avarice. The ground gets smaller. The raging fires become candles and the bodies look like pepper specks on a cratered panicking sphere.

"Fuck me Jim, did you have to destroy everyone?"

And Jim turns his J-shaped head with tears in his eyes. Actual crying tears, emotional response, warning someone is having an emotional response.

"Do you know what they were going to do to you?"

"What are you talking about? They were going to hollow out the earth."

Jim blinks probably seven to eight and a half times. I try to count blinks on people all the time. As if their brains are malfunctioning or breaking down.

"Peter, you were in an insane asylum."

"Yeah, but that was years ago."

Jim blinks another two times, and a couple of tears hit me in the face. Velocity at this altitude turns them to little circles of ice.

Then he just starts breaking down even worse. The whole choke reaction from crying too hard or too fast. As if you want to barf or seizure but all you are doing is sobbing.

But don't worry about Jim. He's manic-depressive. He gets like this all the time.

* * *

"Peter how do you feel today?"

"My head is on repeat, but I think I'm playing my favorite song. Like a playlist or something."

"How is the Paxil working out for you?"

"Uh, good. But I think Jim needs some."

"Ah. Well, we will get him in here one of these days. Remember people have to want to come here on their own accord."

"Yeah. I only did it because I wanted to stop turning into a monster all the time."

"The pill should be repressing those urges."

"It is. I almost got in a car accident yesterday and I was scared of dying, but the monster didn't appear."

"It's good that you're able to do this. Everyone knows how to recognize their problems, but very few actually put the work in to fix themselves."

"Yeah it's such a lucky word now."

"What word are you referring to?"

"Fixed. It's nice to use the word without thinking of castration."

"Were you fixed as a puppy?"

* * *

The coffee is sugared and white and my plastic spoon is the same color. Jim is eating ice cream straight from the carton, from the half gallon. After he cried all the way home we stopped making eye contact for some reason. And all he's been doing is eating his weight in whatever he finds in the fridge. Last night it was carrots.

"Jim for an earthworm you're eating a whole lot of shit."

He finally decides to look at me and I feel myself aging. You ever stared into a mirror at yourself and find that there's death in your eyes? I'm looking at Jim the same way, but the question is which one of us is really dying here in this place, in this timeline.

"I'm going to go get some more food before you eat it all, I'll be back."

Jim just stuffs more Rocky Road into his gullet. No brain freeze to speak of either. It's like he's immune to feeling things. I chug my coffee and the lightness echoes through me. Caffeine is the opposite of alcohol, and it messes you up just as bad; an epileptic kind of up.

I'm outside. I see a cat passing on the street looking slinky. Cats make everything so graceful and I should be chasing it and destroying it but I can't even make a step forward. I don't even care if anything ever existed again. I keep going through exit doors. I don't remember what an entrance really is.

The gas station gets closer. People pull in and out and fill their cars with fuel to keep moving in this world. They don't even know which way they're going, or I'd like to think they're worried about it all too.

I should have taken the bus. At least that way I get real characters to interact with. Nature itself is boring. Who cares what a cloud looks like to you? Or how the river's noise is so calming? Or how the stars are mythological tales for you to care about? Goddamn they are just energetic slugs and slops of nothing. They do nothing for you.

* * *

I enter the gas station and the attendant is easily a woman who hates everything that has ever come into contact with her. Her eyes are razor sharp slits, the windows they put on castles to protect from arrows.

The ice cream cooler is in the back and I pick out all the stuff kids get in elementary school cafeterias. Also I grab a 32 oz malt liquor fruit bomb. They ban these in certain places but the buzz they give you is a wonder to behold, minus the horrible taste of shampoo.

The checkout lady starts slamming the ice cream and I can hear their particles breaking. She looks at the can and scowls like a camel spitting in the desert.

"Can I see your ID?"

"Of course."

I hand it to her and she looks at for awhile then looks me straight in the eye. I smile and then she finally understands it. She runs the card three times to make sure I was born on the right date.

Of course I'm twenty one in dog years. In dog years I'm forty-two.

I start to walk home but slower and slower goes the clock. I keep guzzling the alcohol and wondering why it feels so good to be buzzed and tipsy. Why is it that I feel so much more real when I'm drinking myself to a burn out in three years? It's probably because I feel that I'm closer to dying and that feeling can't be replaced but it can be manufactured with the right vices.

I didn't really drink much until I was legal to. I mean sure I snuck here and there when I could, and get drunk every one weekend in awhile, but now it's just too easy. No one can halt my alcoholic advances. You could call that the ultimate freedom of choice, the choice to destroy yourself.

I watch my hand turn purple and black and swell. The can crushes itself in two and I hear myself combining the sounds of growls and laughter. I can see our house in the distance but I don't think I'm gonna make it. And even if I do I'm just going to be the same old demon. The same old monster with his old tastes.


End file.
